Hi there. Had another issue today, when Wotja stopped playing in the middle of my session with the hint "playtime has ended".Since this is a full version, this shouldn't happen, right? Also there are still noise-issues inside Audiobus..., latest version of Wotja2018.Another thing: the switching between voices needs two touches now, used to be so much nicer like it was handled in Noatikl, I think. An chance of re-changing this? Would be great!I'll end with thanks for your work, as always: much appreciated!Cheers, tobias

animal wrote:Wotja stopped playing in the middle of my session with the hint "playtime has ended".Since this is a full version, this shouldn't happen, right?

The Music Play Time for Wotja is 1 hour so this is correct behaviour. 1 hour is plenty for creating wotjas etc. and pressing play is all that is needed to restart it. If you want Wotja to play for longer, you can do that with an XT Extension in the subscription version. See the FAQ on this: https://intermorphic.com/wotja/#faq-xt-extensions. Note: We are presently reviewing this side of things.

animal wrote:Also there are still noise-issues inside Audiobus..., latest version of Wotja2018.

OK, could you please be specific? If you are sometimes hearing a buzzing sound, try pressing play and then stop again and that should cure it.

animal wrote:Another thing: the switching between voices needs two touches now, used to be so much nicer like it was handled in Noatikl, I think. An chance of re-changing this? Would be great!

That is harder than you might think, but it is noted!

animal wrote:I'll end with thanks for your work, as always: much appreciated!

Hi Tim,Thanks for your reply.I am talking about the full-payed-non-subscription-version, are you saying I‘ll still have to pay for a longer playing time than 1 hour? If so you should really reconsider, because I for one won‘t go down that road (this would mean a subscription hidden in a full payed version, in my eyes). I am playing longer sessions than 1 hour, and I don‘t see myself hitting „play“ again every sixty minutes, can‘t seriously work like this... .Hopefully you can understand and change this behaviour. Thank you.Tobias

On iOS we wanted to find a way to hit a $5 for a 6 month subscription price point so as to make *Wotja authoring* more accessible to a wider audience. It turned out that the way we could do that was to have a 1 hour play time with XT IAP for those who REALLY needed more. It was either that or increasing the cost of the annual version - something we did not want to do... It just so happened that Wotja 2017 iOS was configured to 8 hours, but should have been 1 hr .

Anyhow, we keep thinking about how to improve all aspects of Wotja (the business model being one of them, too) and since we put this scheme in place we have had further thoughts on how to simplify and improve it. We are therefore *considering* an adjustment to our model that would allow us to increase the play time for both the base "Unlocked" tier AND the annual version. Tweaking the bus model is a difficult thing to do (and we want to make sure we get it right) and so requires further deliberation before we decide whether to roll it out or not. Stay tuned!

Since writing the above we have now decided that in the next update we will be increasing the Music Play Time from 1 hour to 4 hours.

This will be for both the Annual version (e.g. Wotja 2018) and the subscription version's "Unlocked" tier.

4 hours for continuous play should cater for any conceivable authoring need so we hope it will now work better for you!

NB: We will also keep, for now, anyhow, the existing XT tiers put in place for those with a need for continuous play that was longer than what was available above (i.e. use in an installation for example). We will be looking to replace those tiers with a more flexible scheme in due course.

Thanks, but I am no longer interested. Too late to refund, otherwise I would have done that. I used to be fighting for you guys, but it‘s true: this is real sneaky behaviour. If you change someting so substantial, without declaring it clearly, you lose me. Not a big thing. Just one guy fed up. Good luck, I will find other means to express myself in the future.

animal wrote:Thanks, but I am no longer interested. Too late to refund, otherwise I would have done that. I used to be fighting for you guys, but it‘s true: this is real sneaky behaviour. If you change someting so substantial, without declaring it clearly, you lose me. Not a big thing. Just one guy fed up. Good luck, I will find other means to express myself in the future.

We have NO idea at all what you mean about sneaky behaviour. For about 6 months now (ever since introduction of XT Tiers) we have CLEARLY highlighted - both on the website in several places and in iTunes description fields - the 1 hour play time that was to come in Wotja 2018. In no way were we hiding that *at all*. We primarily introduced the XT tiers so we could reduce the price to ONLY $5 / 6 months for those that just wanted to create/author - and we thought that having that goal was a good thing. We also felt that 1 hour was plenty for the purposes of authoring mixes (it is just a press of the play button, after all, to restart play). We have had no push back on that apart, really, from your comment in this thread a few days ago, so we thought all was well. When we saw your comment we listened, as ever, jumped to it and tried to figure out if there was anything we could do. After 10 months of working with subscriptions we had already had some ideas of how to fine tune them and with what we were planning we figured we could make the new change of four-fold increasing the play time from 1 hour to 4 hours. I don't know how any developer could have reacted any more quickly or positively. All the above being the case, we are completely baffled therefore as to the tone of your reply. We of course wish you all the best.

I see where Tobias is coming from – Wotja 2017 corresponded to the XT1 tier, not the basic unlocked tier, so it's quite a significant reduction in functionality, particularly as there's no path within the annual app to allow any longer play time, and I can easily see how someone wouldn't notice the the fine print in the app description if they'd already been using 2017 and just assumed they were getting the same again. Nothing sneaky about it, but it was a big change and made the non-subscription version suddenly much less attractive, so I do sympathise with Tobias' disappointment. I very much hope he'll stay in the fold – I for one have hugely appreciated his input here over the years.

The problem is, I think, that the non-sub version appeals primarily to users who (for all kinds of diverse reasons) don't want to commit to a subscription, rather than to users who want a more limited play time, and the introduction of the XT tiers midway through the cycle suddenly made play time more of an issue than it had been. It would be (genuinely) interesting to know the longest most users ever go, not counting the occasional time I and no doubt others have accidentally left it playing overnight; I'm on XT3 more because I like living inside the possibility of setting it going for a week than because I'm ever likely to want to. But we're only 18 days into 2017 and the feedback has already been actioned, which is great; four hours is probably good enough for most users, though my personal vote (as an annual purchaser as well! – I like to run two instances…) would still be for 8 and parity with XT1 – not because I ever actually go over four hours in normal use, but because it makes a statement about the annual version as a serious tool for long-form evolving compositions. At any rate thanks for being so decisive and prompt about lifting the 1-hour cap; I'm sure that was the right way to go, and hope it turns out to strike the right balance for you guys and the user base alike.

Thanks very much for your support, understanding and comments on this and we value all feedback we get (and, like you, we valued contributions from Tobias).

This whole area is *very* tricky to get right (there are *so many factors* we have to balance) and it is very difficult to try to “develop in public” where we just cannot set out all those factors for discussion. Besides, we would probably bore people to death. Allied to that is we do not like to pre-announce things because nothing is done until it is (there may be a last minute hitch that means we have to go back to the drawing board). Some decisions are harder than others to take and get right and business models and pricing are right there at the front of the queue.

We do know that we *always try* to find solutions that are to the benefit of both existing and new customers, and that allow us also to move forward as well as even maybe try to grow a little in such a small (and unprofitable) niche area as ours. We are in it for the long run so we do try to think ahead as far as we can before doing anything (at the same time as trying to make things simpler), partly because we know that once something is done it can take on a life of its own and be hard to change if we later decide you want to tweak it (this is a case in point).

It is never easy getting that balance right and there will always be some who benefit more and some who feel they have lost out - but that is also the nature of any change, no matter how careful we are to think of and cater for all the different use cases. Sometimes it takes us a few bites at it to get it right - something I think you will agree that we are prepared to do, as we have done just that in the past.

We have learnt a lot about them in the last 10 months and so we are soon going to change what subscriptions we offer and how they work. For this reply (breaking with tradition) I had written about what we are going to do, and a lot about why we are doing it. In reading what I originally wrote about the reasons for it I realised that was just too complicated to communicate (too many factors involved). So, I am going to stick largely to "the what" with a bit of explanation thrown in. There are a lot of things we are trying to do this year so I hope it makes sense and it works for you …

The long and the short of it is that we have decided to revert to 8 hour Music Play Time (MPT) [i.e. as was in Wotja 2017]. Wotja 2018 will see this change first, and the Wotja Unlocked subscription will see it in a few months at the time of release of "Wotja New", below (this change means that limited/commercial use of Wotja for live continuous music generation will again require a Wotja XT (and/or when available a New) tier and we will change the EULA accordingly).

Wotja 2018 (Annual Versions - iOS/macOS)--------------In the light of the continuing discussion of the value of MPT for Wotja 2018 we have decide to increase it back to the 8 hours that were in the 2017 version (rather than the 4 hours proposed earlier in the thread). This will be in Wotja 2018 5.1. Thanks for the feedback on this.

Wotja (Subscription version tier changes - iOS/macOS)--------------The current Wotja In-App Subscription tiers will not change at this time.

Since introducing the 6 month XT tiers, however, it transpires the XT hard limit on maximum continuous Music Play Time (MPT) is OK for some things but does not support some new use cases we have had enquiries about. And, it is also complex to get one's head around, too. Because of these issues, and specifically for those who really do need music play times longer than 8 hours, we are therefore planning some big changes to subscriptions that will come about when we release “Wotja New” (below) in a couple of months.

At this time we will altogether remove from sale ALL the Wotja 6 month XT tiers leaving only the Unlocked tier. The Unlocked tier will have the MPT increased from 1 to 8 hours, meaning the Unlocked tier effectively becomes the present XT1 tier; existing XT1 customers can just subscribe to this tier at renewal time, if they want, saving themselves money at the same time as the price of the Unlocked tier will not change. Customers requiring longer than 8 hour play time would need to check out the new tiers coming in "Wotja New".

Wotja porting to Windows / Android --------------It is a longstanding ambition of ours to make Wotja available on Windows/Android as well as macOS/iOS. The largest issue in this relates to interfaces. Because we are so small and interfaces are so expensive / time consuming to develop we can really only do this if have just one common interface. We can only do that by using a different underlying framework which in turn means Wotja will eventually need to become a new app.

We have settled on the framework and we are midway through a port of a *new* Wotja app that we will release (maybe within a couple of months) for iOS, macOS, Windows and Android (name yet to be decided - lets call it “Wotja New” for now).

“Wotja New” is a partial port, in that it will initially only allow Automatic Album level of creation/playback (with 8 hour MPT), but we plan for full "Pro" editors (i.e. as now) to be available later in the year (for Windows/Android in 2018; iOS/Mac will be 2019). Our plan is to get all porting work done in 2018 (amongst other things!).

NB: The current Wotja/Wotja 2018 for iOS/macOS will stay in place in 2018. In 2019 the current Wotja iOS/macOS subscription versions will be retired and Wotja New will replace them. The new Wotja 2019 iOS/macOS annual version will be based on Wotja New.

NB: The new framework does not support use of Emoji, so we will will be deprecating use of those (older content using them will still play though). Nor does it support Safari App Extensions; to allow us to focus 100% on forward development we will ASAP be removing support for that in the existing macOS versions (but we guess it could come back later as a separate headless app if there was real and sufficient demand). It does not support Apple Watch either; that app will stay but only in the present versions for 2018).

“Wotja New” and New subscription tiers--------------Where it is a subscription version, “Wotja New” will be free (with Free Mode) and will include a low cost 6 month auto-renewing subscription to unlock full Automatic album creation (with 8 hour MPT). When the "Pro" editors are available (i.e. as in Wotja iOS/macOS now) we will include a tier for those, too, similar to "Unlocked" now.

For those who want very long play times there will be some new auto-renewing weekly subscription tiers that will disable, whilst active, the MPT limit altogether (this is as simple as it can get). The lowest price of weekly tier will be for personal / limited commercial use and is expected to be $1 per week on mobile. If you really want to try leave it running for e.g. 8 weeks (something not possible now, e.g. for an installation) then fine, you can, and that would cost only $8 and you could then cancel the weekly subs. We will also be including a few tiers for commercial use, too (this represents a totally new experiment for us).

Auto-renewals are EASY to cancel, so it means if at different times in the year you want to dip into very long play times (i.e. > 8 hours) it works out a lot less than the present 6 monthly XT2/XT3 tiers. It does work out a bit more if you want to try running 24/7 x 365 of course, but we feel that requirement is actually very very specialist.

As ever, there will always be some who benefit more and some who feel they have lost out, but we feel that this is simpler, way more flexible and extendable AND most present XT subscribers will save money (the *vast* majority of present XT subscribers take XT1, which will effectively become Unlocked as it will have 8 hour MPT).

We know the above is a lot to take in, but to keep moving forward we also have to keep changing. At the same time, I hope you can see that we *do* think very carefully about impact on existing and new customers and try to do the best by them - and we do listen and react (and we are just 2 people).

Thanks again for your feedback, support and interest - they are always valued, appreciated and never taken for granted.

You had me at "disable the MPT limit altogether", but actually all that sounds great – the idea of being able to turn the 8-hour limit on and off is a really neat use of the subscription model, and I'm very impressed by the thought that's gone into this for all the different kinds of users. Particular thanks for restoring the 8-hour MPT to the annual versions; that always felt right and comfortable, and it restores smoothness to the path for those who still don't feel comfortable with subscriptions but (rightly) recognise the annual versions as good value and are happy to buy 2018 on top of 2017. And of course that's great news about Windows and Android, and I personally won't miss the features that are due for the chop.

I think there's still a shift waiting to happen in the wider iOS culture to recognise and accept the virtue of subscription models, and somebody needs to say that I know of no company that's thought about it as intelligently, or adapted so responsively, as you guys, which is partly but only partly the result of there only being the two of you to bounce decisions between. I still think the introduction of Wotja 2017 alongside the subscription version was a masterstroke, and way ahead of the game. It'll be interesting to see how the new tiers pan out; experimenting with commercial tiers sounds an extremely cool direction to go in, but most of all I'm looking forward to the power to create music that won't run out till the sun goes dark.

Thanks so much for your understanding on this and we really do appreciate being told when we might need to think again. Despite many, many hours of deliberations and experiments to make sure we get things right sometimes we don't quite ace it, hence the value we place on customer feedback. That said, we also have to find a way survive somehow so we know that (unless we make it all free) we cannot please everyone all the time. All said and done, we hope that once Tobias gets the new Wotja 2018 update we can welcome him back one day.

You had me at "disable the MPT limit altogether", but actually all that sounds great – the idea of being able to turn the 8-hour limit on and off is a really neat use of the subscription model, and I'm very impressed by the thought that's gone into this for all the different kinds of users.

We are also very glad that it sounds like we might have come up with a simpler solution that can move things forward from the present approach. It has taken a lot of hard work to figure this out, but we think and hope it could be quite transformational.

I think there's still a shift waiting to happen in the wider iOS culture to recognise and accept the virtue of subscription models, and somebody needs to say that I know of no company that's thought about it as intelligently, or adapted so responsively, as you guys

Those are very kind and nice words, and we greatly appreciate them - thank you!

I'm looking forward to the power to create music that won't run out till the sun goes dark.

Just a suggestion regarding renaming(rebranding?) of the wotja app.which has the tentatively proposed title of wotja new. how does wotja pro sound?

I have to say I have some sympathy with the comments that Tobias made about the playtime comparison between w2017 and w2018, the differential could be perceived as stripping down a product without reflecting the spec reduction in the pricing, but then again doesn't watja have to keep a running tally of the parameters in memory during the evolution of a song as it unfolds over time? its those little details that the end user probably doesn't factor in, which, again is understandable.I'm actually looking forward to a windows edition as this would enhance and streamline workflow considerably. my ideal scenario being that I have a copy in my studio and a copy available on my ipad so that, if an idea comes to mind while away from the studio, I can plug it into wotja, export the snippet to my pc and get to work on the finer details.

Thanks for the comments. We have a name for the new cross platform app... It is obvious when you know what it is but we won't tempt fate....

With respect to the Music Play Time Timeout, this is now back up to 8 hours in Wotja 2018 from V5.1.

pathworker wrote:I'm actually looking forward to a windows edition as this would enhance and streamline workflow considerably. my ideal scenario being that I have a copy in my studio and a copy available on my ipad so that, if an idea comes to mind while away from the studio, I can plug it into wotja, export the snippet to my pc and get to work on the finer details.

We hope the first release of the Windows version is not far away now (weeks rather than months). It will allow creation/play of automatic albums, and that is going to be useful for some. That release is NOT, however, going to have editing in it (i.e. like in versions for iOS/macOS). Editing in the Windows (or Android) versions won't be available for many months - creating the editor UIs represents a massive amount of work. We hope that most will be before the end of 2018 but there are no promises there, either - we just don't know right now. Maybe we will get luck, who knows! All we know is that we will just chip away at it as fast as we can. NB: You will be able to export Wotja mix files but those cannot be loaded by Mixtikl or Noatikl. So, all in all, it is really going to be a bit of an island to start and we will extend it as we go.

I'll hold off on the windows edition until hopefully editing is up and running( shrugs shoulders).

with regards to wotja 2018(ios), I may consider moving up from the 2017 edition if i can see a compelling reason to do so as, at present this edition is serving me well for my needs.( a lot depends on how seriously ios updates adversely compromise functionality.